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Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt

The controversial journalistic analysis of the mentality that fostered the Holocaust, from the author of The Origins of Totalitarianism

Sparking a flurry of heated debate, Hannah Arendt’s authoritative and stunning report on the trial of German Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann first appeared as a series of articles in The New Yorker in 1963. This revised edition includes material that came to light after the trial, as well as Arendt’s postscript directly addressing the controversy that arose over her account. A major journalistic triumph by an intellectual of singular influence, Eichmann in Jerusalem is as shocking as it is informative—an unflinching look at one of the most unsettling (and unsettled) issues of the twentieth century.

About the Author

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was University Professor of political philosophy in the graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research, a visiting professor at several universities including California, Princeton, Columbia, and Chicago, a research director of the Conference on Jewish Relations, the chief editor of Schocken Books, and the executive director of Jewish Cultural Reconstruction in New York City. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1952, and an Arts and Letters Grant of the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1954. She is also the author of On Revolution and Between Past and Future, which are available from Penguin Classics along with The Portable Hannah Arendt.

Amos Elon (1926–2009) was born in Vienna, Austria, and spent most of his adult life in Jerusalem. A frequent essayist, lecture, and critic who was well known for his articles in The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, he is the author of such bestselling works as The Israelis, Flight into Egypt,Founder, Herzel, and The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch.

Read an Excerpt

INTRODUCTION

Even before its publication as a book, Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (which originally appeared as a series of articles in The New Yorker) generated much controversy. Critics attributed her coverage of the Adolf Eichmann trial to a host of purposes other than simple reporting, such as exposing the role of the Jewish leadership in the Holocaust and raising larger questions about German guilt and the nature of totalitarianism. Arendt was prompted to clarify her intentions in a postscript to the book, claiming in its final sentence, "The present report deals with nothing but the extent to which the court in Jerusalem succeeded in fulfilling the demands of justice" (p. 298). Evaluating the court's success, however, proves to be a more complex endeavor than this statement implies. Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi lieutenant colonel responsible for transporting countless Jews to concentration camps and, in most cases, to their deaths, escaped Germany after World War II and made his way to Argentina, where he lived under a false name until 1960. That year, intelligence operatives from the young nation of Israel kidnapped Eichmann and brought him to Jerusalem to face charges of crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, and membership in three of the four organizations that the Nuremberg Trials had classified as "criminal." The facts of Eichmann's case had been established before the trial and were never in dispute. However, genocide was a new kind of crime; that the Israeli court did not recognize it as such is, in Arendt's view, "at the root of all the failures and shortcomings" of the trial (p. 267). Arendt writes, "Justice demands that the accused be prosecuted, defended, and judged, and that all the other questions of seemingly greater import...be left in abeyance" (p. 5). Much of Arendt's book illustrates that the larger issues were not set aside during the Eichmann trial, showing how the case "was built on what the Jews had suffered, not on what Eichmann had done" (p. 6).

Eichmann told the court that he saw himself as a friend of the Jews, helping them leave a culture for which they were unsuited and move on to better lives elsewhere. He considered himself an ally of Zionists, whom he thought shared his "idealism." Arendt believes himat least, she believes that this was how he saw himself. "Despite all the efforts of the prosecution," Arendt writes, "everybody could see that this man was not a ëmonster,' but it was difficult indeed not to suspect that he was a clown" (p. 54). The transcript of Eichmann's examination by Israeli police while awaiting trial prompts her to observe that "the horrible can be not only ludicrous but outright funny" (p. 48). She dwells on his shallow intellect, his clichÈd speech (which she interprets as a means of consoling himself), his infinite capacity for self-deception, and his profound detachment from reality.

Arendt portrays Eichmann as a "joiner," a conformist, describing him as "a leaf in the whirlwind of time" (p. 32). It is this aspect of his character, according to her, rather than any deeply held convictions shared with the Nazi Party or a rabid hatred of Jews, that accounts for his actions during the war. Apart from determining Eichmann's motivation is the question that, as Arendt observes, must be asked of any criminal defendant: was he aware that his actions were in fact criminal? The prosecution had to assume that he was, as "all ënormal persons'" would be (p. 26). But Arendt asserts that, "under the conditions of the Third Reich only ëexceptions' could be expected to react ënormally'" (pp. 26ñ27). With considerable insight and detail, Arendt explains how Germany's leaders went about creating these conditions, to the point that "conscience as such had apparently got lost in Germany." There were individuals who resisted, she notes, but "their voices were never heard" (p. 103).

In Arendt's view, the real circumstances of Eichmann's actions never came fully to light during the trial. This is why, in part, the trial obscures what for Arendt is "the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught usthe lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil" (p. 252). Eichmann claimed that as his job shifted from forcing Jews from their homes to arranging for them to be killed, he was troubled by the new policy but felt duty-bound to obey his superiors. In fact, he said that not following orders was the only thing that would have given him a bad conscience. As far as Arendt can determine, only once did Eichmann act in a way that could perhaps be construed as resistance, when he decided to send a transport of Jews and Gypsies to the ghetto of LÛdz instead of to Russian territory, where they would have been immediately shot. But, Arendt writes, "his conscience functioned in the expected way only for about four weeks." (p. 95) Arendt does not address directly the question of what Eichmann might have done had his conscience continued functioning "normally." Yet in documenting the results of Nazi efforts to rid other countries of Jews, she concludes that "under conditions of terror most people will comply but some people will not, just as the lesson of the countries to which the Final Solution was proposed is that ëit could happen' in most places but it did not happen everywhere. Humanly speaking, no more is required, and no more can be reasonably asked, for this planet to remain a place fit for human habitation" (p. 233). We could take this as evidence that the only hope of preventing future catastrophes must lie in a morality that is inherent in human nature. On the other hand, Arendt considers Eichmann "terribly and terrifyingly normal" (p. 276). Eichmann in Jerusalem leaves us wondering not only if justice was achieved in Eichmann's case, but also whether the lessons Arendt believes the trial has taught will make a difference in the future.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

What does Arendt mean by the "banality of evil"? (p. 252)

Why does Eichmann cooperate so fully with the Israelis, to the point of volunteering to hang himself?

Why does the defense often fail to present evidence that would have helped Eichmann's case?

According to Arendt, how "normal" is Eichmann?

Is the fact that Eichmann turns out not to be a "monster" a good or a bad thing in terms of its implications for the future?

How could Eichmann have seen himself as a friend of the Jews?

In Arendt's words, Eichmann's definition of an "idealist" is someone who is "prepared to sacrifice for his idea everything and, especially, everybody" (p. 42). According to this definition, is Eichmann an idealist?

The judgment in Eichmann's trial states that "the degree of responsibility increases as we draw further away from the man who uses the fatal instrument with his own hands" (p. 247). In what sense could this be true?

Why does Arendt consider Eichmann's "almost total inability ever to look at anything from the other fellow's point of view" a decisive flaw? (pp. 47ñ48)

What does Arendt mean when she writes, "like most true stories, [it] is incomplete"? (p. 111)

For Further Reflection

Does Eichmann in Jerusalem help to explain why the Holocaust happened?

In terms of responsibility, where should the line be drawn between acts committed by individuals and "acts of state"?

Do you agree with Arendt that "in politics obedience and support are the same"? (p. 279)

ABOUT HANNAH ARENDT

Born in 1906 in Hanover, Germany, eminent political philosopher Hannah Arendt grew up in K–nigsberg (once part of East Prussia and later renamed Kaliningrad as part of the Soviet Union). From an early age, Arendt proved herself a gifted student. She began her university studies in the cosmopolitan Weimar era, was deeply influenced by philosophers Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers, and received her Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg in 1928.

Before the Nazis came to power, Arendt was a political activist and worked with German Zionists to publicize Nazi persecution of Jews. In 1933, she fled to Paris, where she married the philosophy professor Heinrich Bl¸cher, and they managed to emigrate to the United States in 1941. In New York City, Arendt continued to work for Jewish causes and was chief editor at Schocken Books. Her monumental work The Origins of Totalitarianism was published in 1951, and numerous other books of political philosophy followed, including The Human Condition and the controversial Eichmann in Jerusalem. Arendt taught at many universities, including Princeton, the University of Chicago, and the New School for Social Research. She died in 1975.

Related Titles

Jan T. Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (2001) One day in 1941, half of the citizens in Nazi-occupied Jedwabne murdered the other halfóall but seven of the town's Jews. This controversial account of that day uses eyewitness testimony and physical evidence to reconstruct one of the hidden horrors of the Holocaust.

Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933ñ1941 (1999) and I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942-45 (2001) A professor at the University of Dresden when the Nazis came to power, Victor Klemperer was protected from deportation by his marriage to an Aryan woman. His secret diary, first published in 1995, documents a daily life that includes small humiliations as well as arbitrary arrests and beatings.

Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study of Ethics and Politics (1932) Influential theologian Reinhold Niebuhr argues that, because humans are inherently sinful, conflict between them is inevitable. While individuals can often transcend the self-interest that governs their behavior, societies cannot, making peace between them difficult to maintain.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (1886) As in many of his other works, Nietzsche here offers a different perspective on the most enduring human values. Considering religious teachings an inadequate basis for morality, he outlines a way of understanding morality that is more consistent with the realities of life.

Richard Overy, Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands, 1945 (2001) In the months before the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal in November 1945, Allied legal authorities gathered evidence from interrogations of Nazi officials. The transcripts assembled and analyzed in this history provide a previously unseen portrait of the Third Reich in defeat.

What People are Saying About This

"Narrator Wanda McCaddon brings a cultured British slant to the narrative, sometimes gently delivering various European accents while moving forward calmly and rationally." -AudioFile

Reading Group Guide

INTRODUCTION

Even before its publication as a book, Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (which originally appeared as a series of articles in The New Yorker) generated much controversy. Critics attributed her coverage of the Adolf Eichmann trial to a host of purposes other than simple reporting, such as exposing the role of the Jewish leadership in the Holocaust and raising larger questions about German guilt and the nature of totalitarianism. Arendt was prompted to clarify her intentions in a postscript to the book, claiming in its final sentence, "The present report deals with nothing but the extent to which the court in Jerusalem succeeded in fulfilling the demands of justice" (p. 298). Evaluating the court's success, however, proves to be a more complex endeavor than this statement implies. Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi lieutenant colonel responsible for transporting countless Jews to concentration camps and, in most cases, to their deaths, escaped Germany after World War II and made his way to Argentina, where he lived under a false name until 1960. That year, intelligence operatives from the young nation of Israel kidnapped Eichmann and brought him to Jerusalem to face charges of crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, and membership in three of the four organizations that the Nuremberg Trials had classified as "criminal." The facts of Eichmann's case had been established before the trial and were never in dispute. However, genocide was a new kind of crime; that the Israeli court did not recognize it as such is, in Arendt's view, "at the root of all the failures and shortcomings" of the trial (p. 267). Arendt writes, "Justice demands that the accused be prosecuted, defended, and judged, and that all the other questions of seemingly greater import...be left in abeyance" (p. 5). Much of Arendt's book illustrates that the larger issues were not set aside during the Eichmann trial, showing how the case "was built on what the Jews had suffered, not on what Eichmann had done" (p. 6).

Eichmann told the court that he saw himself as a friend of the Jews, helping them leave a culture for which they were unsuited and move on to better lives elsewhere. He considered himself an ally of Zionists, whom he thought shared his "idealism." Arendt believes him—at least, she believes that this was how he saw himself. "Despite all the efforts of the prosecution," Arendt writes, "everybody could see that this man was not a ‘monster,' but it was difficult indeed not to suspect that he was a clown" (p. 54). The transcript of Eichmann's examination by Israeli police while awaiting trial prompts her to observe that "the horrible can be not only ludicrous but outright funny" (p. 48). She dwells on his shallow intellect, his clichéd speech (which she interprets as a means of consoling himself), his infinite capacity for self-deception, and his profound detachment from reality.

Arendt portrays Eichmann as a "joiner," a conformist, describing him as "a leaf in the whirlwind of time" (p. 32). It is this aspect of his character, according to her, rather than any deeply held convictions shared with the Nazi Party or a rabid hatred of Jews, that accounts for his actions during the war. Apart from determining Eichmann's motivation is the question that, as Arendt observes, must be asked of any criminal defendant: was he aware that his actions were in fact criminal? The prosecution had to assume that he was, as "all ‘normal persons'" would be (p. 26). But Arendt asserts that, "under the conditions of the Third Reich only ‘exceptions' could be expected to react ‘normally'" (pp. 26–27). With considerable insight and detail, Arendt explains how Germany's leaders went about creating these conditions, to the point that "conscience as such had apparently got lost in Germany." There were individuals who resisted, she notes, but "their voices were never heard" (p. 103).

In Arendt's view, the real circumstances of Eichmann's actions never came fully to light during the trial. This is why, in part, the trial obscures what for Arendt is "the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us—the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil" (p. 252). Eichmann claimed that as his job shifted from forcing Jews from their homes to arranging for them to be killed, he was troubled by the new policy but felt duty-bound to obey his superiors. In fact, he said that not following orders was the only thing that would have given him a bad conscience. As far as Arendt can determine, only once did Eichmann act in a way that could perhaps be construed as resistance, when he decided to send a transport of Jews and Gypsies to the ghetto of Lódz instead of to Russian territory, where they would have been immediately shot. But, Arendt writes, "his conscience functioned in the expected way only for about four weeks." (p. 95) Arendt does not address directly the question of what Eichmann might have done had his conscience continued functioning "normally." Yet in documenting the results of Nazi efforts to rid other countries of Jews, she concludes that "under conditions of terror most people will comply but some people will not, just as the lesson of the countries to which the Final Solution was proposed is that ‘it could happen' in most places but it did not happen everywhere. Humanly speaking, no more is required, and no more can be reasonably asked, for this planet to remain a place fit for human habitation" (p. 233). We could take this as evidence that the only hope of preventing future catastrophes must lie in a morality that is inherent in human nature. On the other hand, Arendt considers Eichmann "terribly and terrifyingly normal" (p. 276). Eichmann in Jerusalem leaves us wondering not only if justice was achieved in Eichmann's case, but also whether the lessons Arendt believes the trial has taught will make a difference in the future.

ABOUT HANNAH ARENDT

Born in 1906 in Hanover, Germany, eminent political philosopher Hannah Arendt grew up in Königsberg (once part of East Prussia and later renamed Kaliningrad as part of the Soviet Union). From an early age, Arendt proved herself a gifted student. She began her university studies in the cosmopolitan Weimar era, was deeply influenced by philosophers Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers, and received her Ph.D. from the University of Heidelberg in 1928.

Before the Nazis came to power, Arendt was a political activist and worked with German Zionists to publicize Nazi persecution of Jews. In 1933, she fled to Paris, where she married the philosophy professor Heinrich Blücher, and they managed to emigrate to the United States in 1941. In New York City, Arendt continued to work for Jewish causes and was chief editor at Schocken Books. Her monumental work The Origins of Totalitarianism was published in 1951, and numerous other books of political philosophy followed, including The Human Condition and the controversialEichmann in Jerusalem. Arendt taught at many universities, including Princeton, the University of Chicago, and the New School for Social Research. She died in 1975.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

What does Arendt mean by the "banality of evil"? (p. 252)

Why does Eichmann cooperate so fully with the Israelis, to the point of volunteering to hang himself?

Why does the defense often fail to present evidence that would have helped Eichmann's case?

According to Arendt, how "normal" is Eichmann?

Is the fact that Eichmann turns out not to be a "monster" a good or a bad thing in terms of its implications for the future?

How could Eichmann have seen himself as a friend of the Jews?

In Arendt's words, Eichmann's definition of an "idealist" is someone who is "prepared to sacrifice for his idea everything and, especially, everybody" (p. 42). According to this definition, is Eichmann an idealist?

The judgment in Eichmann's trial states that "the degree of responsibility increases as we draw further away from the man who uses the fatal instrument with his own hands" (p. 247). In what sense could this be true?

Why does Arendt consider Eichmann's "almost total inability ever to look at anything from the other fellow's point of view" a decisive flaw? (pp. 47–48)

What does Arendt mean when she writes, "like most true stories, [it] is incomplete"? (p. 111)

For Further Reflection

Does Eichmann in Jerusalem help to explain why the Holocaust happened?

In terms of responsibility, where should the line be drawn between acts committed by individuals and "acts of state"?

Do you agree with Arendt that "in politics obedience and support are the same"? (p. 279)

Related Titles

Jan T. Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (2001)One day in 1941, half of the citizens in Nazi-occupied Jedwabne murdered the other half—all but seven of the town's Jews. This controversial account of that day uses eyewitness testimony and physical evidence to reconstruct one of the hidden horrors of the Holocaust.

Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1933–1941 (1999) and I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years, 1942-45 (2001)A professor at the University of Dresden when the Nazis came to power, Victor Klemperer was protected from deportation by his marriage to an Aryan woman. His secret diary, first published in 1995, documents a daily life that includes small humiliations as well as arbitrary arrests and beatings.

Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study of Ethics and Politics (1932)Influential theologian Reinhold Niebuhr argues that, because humans are inherently sinful, conflict between them is inevitable. While individuals can often transcend the self-interest that governs their behavior, societies cannot, making peace between them difficult to maintain.

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (1886)As in many of his other works, Nietzsche here offers a different perspective on the most enduring human values. Considering religious teachings an inadequate basis for morality, he outlines a way of understanding morality that is more consistent with the realities of life.

Richard Overy, Interrogations: The Nazi Elite in Allied Hands, 1945 (2001)In the months before the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal in November 1945, Allied legal authorities gathered evidence from interrogations of Nazi officials. The transcripts assembled and analyzed in this history provide a previously unseen portrait of the Third Reich in defeat.

Editorial Reviews

There will be those who wonder how Miss Arendt, after attending the Eichman trial and studying the record and pertinent material, could announce, as she solemnly does in this book, that Eichman was not really a Nazi at heart, that he did really not know Hilter's program when he joined the party, that the Gestapo were helpful to the Jews in Palestinian immigration, that Himmler (Himmler!) had a sense of pity, that the Jewish gas-killing program grew out of Hitler's euthanasia program and that, all in all, Eichmann was really a modest man.-- Books of the Century; New York Times

Michael A. Musmanno

Brilliant and disturbing.” —Stephen Spender, The New York Review of Books

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

People seem most upset by the author's reluctance to agree with the commonly accepted profile of Adolf Eichmann as a rabid anti-semitic, and the quinttessential personification of evil. Emotionally it is not easy to accept that the evil men do is often times more evil than are the men themselves. The opposite is also true. But when evil is done, there must be some evil force that did it. There is, but it is not necessarily an individual man, but, rather, mankind itself. The alternative to blaming this on Eichmann is to blame it on our kind, which in some small yet uncomfortable way, means blaming it on ouselves. Freud knew about the dark side of humankind as pervasive and not restrictive to a certain few. Given the right circumstances we would be surprised who is and who is not capable of evil acts. When the author seems to let Eichmann off the hook, she puts humanity itself in his place. That is uncomfortable, especially to those not in touch with their dark side. Those people, by the way, are usually the most dangerous. They can't fight against their darkest impulses because they don't acknowledge their existence in the first place. What happened in Germany during the 1930's and 40's could happen anywhere, including here, given the right circumstances. These circumstances are unknown to Americans. Imagine 3-400% inflation etc., etc. In the final analysis, what happened was not the fault of one evil man, but of the pervassive evil that permeates humankind.

ProfessorBoh

More than 1 year ago

In the historiography of the Holocaust Arendt has been controversial. However, as Elon points out in his introduction the controversy has arisen because of Arendt's style of writing. Heavily laced with sarcasm "Eichman in Jerusalem" is not so much a history of the trial nor the Holocaust. Instead, it is a commentary that raises questions about Eichman's role in the Holocaust. Was he the architect of it? Was he just one of Christopher Browning's "Ordinary Men"? Or was he something in between? To understand Arendt's view it is best to read her own words. In doing so it helps one to try to understand how something as incomprehensible as the Holocaust could occur.

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Hannah Arendt is without question one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century.She is of all political philosophers the most convincing and profound analyst of the totalitarian mind .Her great power in thought and her great reputation were perhaps only partly responsible for the distorted judgment which made this particular work a permanent stain on her reputation, not only as a thinker, but as a moral human being.For in this account of the trial of one of the principle perpetrators of the murder of European Jewry she places herself as judge and jury not simply above those in the courtroom in Jerusalem, but above Jewish history itself. In so doing she whether willingly or not seems to somehow diminish the evil of the perpetrators of the crime ( 'the banality of evil') and to indict the victims or at least their leaders for being partly responsible for this. What offends in all this is the arrogance of her tone , and her somehow distancing herself from the victims . She writes as if she is above the Jewish cultural and religious tradition which she knows only superficially. Her point of reference and belonging is to the great tradition of European thought , whose demonic underside and strong anti - Semitic face she does not truly portray.

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